Monday Moaning

Half Pint Cream Bottle

Milk, yuck!

When I was a kid millions of years ago (1950s) we used to get a cream bottle of milk 300ml or a half pint) every day. It was okay in the winter, but in the summer it was yucky and tepid, vomitingly tepid; some kids did actually chunder. Do you understand the concept of a chain reaction?

The milk was delivered to the school during the pre-dawn milk round, kids started school at 9am which meant the milk had like more than four hours without refrigeration because we used to get it about 10am playtime (recess).

The scheme was instigated in 1937 and ended in 1967.

I read this during the weekend on BBC News: “The government (British) has pledged to continue to provide free milk to all under-fives in the UK despite ordering a review of the scheme.”

The Brits still have it.

The milk we used to get was full cream milk, you had to shake the bottle to mix the layer of cream, yes, you could see it. Thick rich yellow cream on the top of the milk.

Cream Separator

But today’s processing removes a lot of the butterfat. The modern stuff (whole milk) boasts only 3% Fat; like they are doing you a favour. Milk with 3% Fat is not whole milk. Whole milk should contain 3.5% – 5.3% butterfat.

I remember milking time, most of the milk went in the milk churn, some of the milk went into the separator to recover the cream, what was left was skim milk and skim milk went to the pigs, it was pig food (it still does, but the fat rich ones who need to lose weight).

Once milk has been through the separator it only has about 0.05% butterfat left, making it next to useless, except for the pigs. If you didn’t have pigs it went down the drain.

But today the industry has ‘Low Fat’ milk, etc; with varying degrees of butterfat and the corporations sell it at the same price as whole milk. They are ripping you off wholesale. Because they get the profit from the cream or butter, and they double their profit by selling pig food to people.

This has long been a beef for me. One because I hate the taste (or lack of it) in low fat milk; and, two, I object to be being taken for a fool.

The milk we used to get was pasteurised, that is it was heated to 68 degrees to kill the bacteria and cooled again. Today the milk is homogenised which means the butterfat is broken down to remain evenly mixed with the milk.

Milk today is not milk

The milk we get today in plastic bottles and cartons is not milk, be it organic or not, it is a white tasteless liquid that defies the definition of milk.

It is so far removed from being milk that users of the product description ‘milk’ should be prosecuted for making a false claim. But, of course, we know that will never happen.

Three years ago I lived in a semi-rural area and used to send the kids up to the ‘corale‘ (milking shed) each day to get a 2lt (3+ pints) bottle of milk straight from the cow. It was wonderful, it was like being transported back to my childhood; it made coffee all the more wicked for drinking. And, you’ve (younger generation) have never had cornflakes that tasted so yummy.

In the US (and, I suspect, in many other parts of the world) it is illegal for the farmers to sell their milk directly to the public. Not because it’s ‘unhealthy’, but because you’ll realise that you are being cheated and stop buying their product in favour of the real McCoy.

But, nobody cares. Nobody bleats about the fact that you’re being lied to and ripped off. You all just accept what the corporations dish out to you. This is why I support Occupy Wall Street, because it’s all about the little things that are being forced on us as well as the major financial crunches.

It all makes me wonder why the Brits want to keep the tradition of school milk.